Support out Troops? Not if we can help it!

* The 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard returned recently from extended duty in Iraq, which was reportedly the longest consecutive deployment of any outfit (22 months, counting extensions). However, the Guardsmen still do not qualify for government education benefits. The law allows the benefits only for those on "active duty" at least 730 days, but the Minnesota Guard's orders (as well as some other outfits' orders), were specifically written for "729 days."

Write your congress critter NOW to protest this government weasel action. To specifically limit deployment orders by ONE DAY in order to avoid making educational benefit payments is an unconscionable and heinous act. The uncivil servants who came up with this cost saving idea should be booted from any future government service as a distinct warning to others who would try such a despicable ploy to avoid dispersing benefits to vets. What a great way to promote joining the Guard.

And I think to myself; "What a wonderful world."

This past summer, two capital-murder inmates were put to death after curious court policies failed them. Luther Williams's execution was carried out in Alabama in August after the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to stop it, despite his plea that the state's lethal injection procedure was unconstitutional. However, one month later, the Court voted to accept for consideration another case questioning the constitutionality of the injection. (Court policy is that four votes are needed to accept a case, but five are required to stay an execution.) In September, just minutes after the Court's lethal- injection case was accepted, lawyers for Michael Richard, who was scheduled to die that evening, rushed to file a stay with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal and promised delivery by 5:20 p.m. The court clerk responded, "We close at five"; the petition didn't make it; and Richard was executed at 8:23.

Much as I hate to admit it, sometimes bureaucracy can be a beautiful thing.

And these people want to run your healthcare????

Pentagon investigators discovered in August that a small South Carolina company fraudulently collected $20.5 million dollars in shipping costs, including one invoice of $999,798 for sending two washers (cost: 19 cents each) to a base in Texas. According to Bloomberg News, the Defense Department was said to have a policy of automatically and unquestioningly paying shipping bills labeled "priority."

Remember these little bon mots come November OK?